I have become comfortably numb
by daysofourhives
Summary: All human all made up all breaking the rules. *My* Tate is the one who smokes in this pair. Literally and figuratively. Misdemeanor-freaking drug use, smut but sweet   DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT CONDONE THE USE OF DRUGS.THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION.


THANKSGIVING NIGHT

Time screeched to a halt, in a few slow blinks. It seemed as if my sight had grown acute and poor at once, as well as my hearing.

Damn, I thought. Why didn't I try this when he first started? I was so relaxed, music was more complex and beautiful…this wasn't like being drunk at all. This was…being awake during a dream.

Tate had dragged the old leather loveseat into a kitty-corner position so he could watch me Get Dumb. The wireless headphones were buried in his hair and his head was flung back against the seat.

Tate?

Tate!

Tate answer me, I see you over there.

Was I actually saying this out loud?

"How'd you get over there?" I drawled. Just a second ago he was right here. Or an hour ago.

He snorted. "Walked. Damn, baby, you must be wasted."

I raised my eyes to him and he laughed out loud. It was like music to me.

"I love you," I said, so heartfelt I thought I would burst.

"I love you too babe, but you are fuckin' BLISTERED!" His laughter continued, a wonderful stream of the sounds of… "Look at Vi's eyes! Tequila sunrise!"

Oh shit. He's right. I remember him moving over there now, telling me "Come here" . Then I put my head back to push myself up I and started thinking about this place in DC we went once during middle school, and I was wandering down the halls of the Smithsonian and…how much time had passed? I covered my mouth. Addie called from somewhere beyond the line of my vision.

"You've been down about ten minutes, Vi."

Tate tried not to laugh, but it snorted its way out, making him spit cigarette smoke like a dragon. Tate, I love you. I never realized how deep it was, how dark sky and swirled with rainbow pastel galaxies…

"Well. So are you." What witty raillery!

His head bobbed. "It's all true. I regret nothing."

"Tate?"

"I'm still here, babe. Open your eyes."

"Tate?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes angel?"

"I love you."

"I know, baby, I love you too." He glanced sidewise at my mother, a sly smile on his face. "You like this, honey?" He took a slow drag off of that cigarette and it just looked so damn sexy.

"This shit is fantastic."

Everyone laughed at the Little Pot Virgin. I felt like bowing or curtseying.

"No, really. I mean, I…how do you say it…? This is almost better'n sex. Almost better'n when we got back together last summer, mmmmm…"

"ALL RIGHT!" Addie shouted gleefully.

"I think the only thing better would be to be this high AND the sex," Tate replied, that sexy-ass smoke trailing out of his mouth. Suddenly I realized this conversation had taken place, loudly, right in front of my mother and his sister. I fell over and buried my face into the sofa for an eternity.

When I finally came back up no one was the worse for wear. I got up and shuffled over to where Tate sat, having turned the loveseat again to face the fire. He was totally blissed-out: headphones unable to mask the extremely loud Pink Floyd blasting into his brain, head lolled back, silently speaking the words to the song, eyes closed.

_When I was a child,_

_I caught a fleeting glimpse_

_Out of the corner of my eye…_

"You are such a cliché right now," I said. His eyes flew open and he gave me a big grin, sticking the tip of his tongue between his teeth. He patted the cushion beside him. "Sit sit sit!"

I slowly backed myself into the loveseat and he put out his right arm, pulling me onto his shoulder and chest. That smell. That Tate smell. I drank it in. He was warm and human and gentle and thoughtful and just…a man.

"You're mine," I said into his sweatshirt, right into The Cure's Robert Smith's face.

"Yes I am. You mine?"

"Don't even ask," I snuggled.

"Hey, come up here. Come here, Vi, listen to this." He pulled one side of the headphones out and allowing me to listen. "This is the fucken most awe-inspiring fucken guitar solo that will ever be."

We sat there. It was pretty hard to keep my ear near the speaker, Tate's head was bobbing too much.

"Damn," he sighed. If I could play like that…I'd just give up. I'd have it all then."

He crossed his other arm over his chest and laced his fingers on the round of my shoulder, hugging me.

I returned my head to his chest, and decided there to make him come down there with me instead of my go 'up there'.

"Hey…hey!" I hissed, pulling on the sweatshirt. "Come down here! Come on!"

He walked his feet out a little across the floor and slumped down to me, behind the back of the loveseat.

"What are we doing?" he said conspiratorially.

"This," I said, and gathering the string from the hood on his sweatshirt, I smashed my lips against him. I felt him rush his breath and he kissed me back. Long, and wet and twirling in my mouth. I almost slid off the slippery leather to drag him to the floor. I heard the song start again; he was looping it. I turned my head to the side and looked at the fire, Tate kissing a line down the side of my neck from my ear to my collarbone. It was like being worshipped by my most fervent supplicant.

"You want to do it?" he whispered in my ear.

"What?"

"Try sex when you're high?"

I turned to look at his eyes. Half open, red and soggy.

"Tate! They'll hear you!"

"Come on, let's go to bed, Addie. I'm too old to hang anymore." I heard my mother say pointedly

I love my mother. I really do. Much respect for the Momser.

"I'm not too young!" Addie answered brightly. Little perv.

"Ohhh, yes you are," she replied. The lights switched off. We heard them step onto the stairs, and then the door to the stairs shut.

"Oh shit!" Tate giggled. "Busted!"

I didn't give five shits. I got what I wanted. I dragged him deep into the loveseat with me, him all cramped up and legs hanging off the end. This was incompatible with my plans, so I rolled over and we fell with a loud thump on the floor.

Distantly, upstairs, I heard Addie laughing.

Tate had the breath knocked out of him a little, but he recovered quickly. "I have always wanted to do this. Since last Thanksgiving when we smoked and you didn't get off."

"Well, I'm sure as hell gonna get off now, and so are you," I said in his ear.

"Oh, fuck," he breathed.

Get this damn sweatshirt off now, damn it. I was tugging and pulling and wearing myself out trying to pull up over his head. He sat up on his knees and pulled the offending garment off. Sparse silvery hairs between his pectorals appeared in the firelight. With one slow hand, he unbuttoned the faded jeans he was wearing, and I was transfixed.

"Being high makes you _way_ too sexy, boy," I said. I watched as he slid the zipper down, millimeter by millimeter until his paisley boxers were straining out against the denim.

"Holy, holy shit!" I sighed, pulling him back down. His graceful hand went under my sweater and under my bra, kneading and pulling at the shrunken bit of tissue there until I arched under his deep kisses, planting my own small hand against the smooth of his chest.

"Help," I said weakly. "Help me." I was struggling to get the sweater out from under me, weighted down by his body. Tate lifted me up with one arm and I pulled it free, tossing it on the loveseat. He then slid the hand to the middle of my back and snapped my bra like an expert. Like a Boss. He'd gotten pretty damn good at that over time. Practice made perfect and all.

"That all you want to get rid of?" he asked, staring me down with those brown eyes that had no bottom, just went on and on for miles and worlds and universes. I shook my head no before I said it and he curled his long elegant fingers under the edge of my cotton pants and slipped them down, agonizingly slow. I was rounding up against his hand, knuckles sweeping against my lower stomach as the fabric moved away. I felt it yank at my feet and then it was gone. His old Levis met the same fate right behind and he kneeled between my knees, looking down at me. His eyes traveled down and were arrested at my plain jane purple panties. I had not been expecting any action tonight, but I was wrong.

"Ah, look at this," he said, eyes returning to mine as he brushed the backs of his fingers across the damp seam at my crotch. "Does my baby want something?" He lifted the fingers to his mouth and stuck them in.

"God damn it, Tate!" I gasped, abdomen heaving. He lowered himself down on me again and smiled against my breathless lips.

"You asked me to help you. I can help you." He ground his hips into me and I strained up. Get them off, both of them, right now…!

"Both of them?" he asked winsomely. Did I say that out loud? I was so high and hot and entranced I didn't remember.

"Yours, mine. Underwear, damn it to hell, you know what I mean!"

Smiling like a crocodile, all white teeth and dimples. He gave a little shrug and sat back up, sliding his hands down my sides and putting his thumbs under the thin line of elastic.

"You ready?" he asked, still toothsome and hot. I nodded my compliance.

And I swear to Buddah, he took both hands full of purple cotton and ripped holes in the side of my underwear. The elastic was tougher, so he bent down and chewed the waist and leg open in half with few grinds of the Perfect Teeth.

Where'd he pick that up? Oh yeah: porno. The reminder of my plain janes slipped away.

I wasn't as artful. I got my toes under the waistband of those green and blue paisleys and pushed then as fast and as far as I could without ripping vital organs from their moorings.

He cocked his head to one side and made a little face. "Well played." With that he kissed me and I felt him position himself against me. I could have bucked fast and…

"Ab imo pectore," he whispered into my mouth.

"Fucking…don't speak fucking Latin to me!" I panted. He bumped his nose against mine.

"I told you I love you in the oldest of languages in civilization," he replied.

Romantic, that was, even if my aim was to bang him like a cheap screen door.

"You ready, baby?" he dipped to my ear.

"I have been…I have been." I was getting ridiculously close to loss of control. And then he did it, and I _did_ lose control.

"Oh my God…" he sighed as he sank, head thrown back and eyes closed in squints. I could see his bared teeth glint in the yellow firelight. He came back down to me and let out a deep breath.

"Babe, you better do work because this feels too damn good and I am not gonna last long," he told me, spoke haltingly and through little hitches in his soft voice. I replied by putting my heels into the depression of his spine at his lower back and locking them around him.

"Not a problem," I said. He went on his elbows under each arm, reaching to clasp his fingers around my shoulders. The headphones lay next to my ear. Guitar solo again. He was keeping time with it, slow. Beat, cymbals. Beat, cymbals.

Dipping and bending with the fluidity of a snake above me.

Tight spring in my belly, getting tighter. Beat, cymbals. Beat, cymbals.

Gonna break. Gonna tear. Spring's too tight.

When I raised my shoulders and my belly contracted my position into a slight crouch and the spring broke free he grabbed my jaw in his hand and stared at me. He loved doing that. He always watched me react.

_You are only coming through in waves,_

_Your lips move but I can't hear what you say…_

Those waves broke over and over and over until I fell like a rag doll, back to the floor. He let me relax a little, waiting through the little residual earthquakes. Aftershocks.

"That was quick," he noted. Old Tate voice.

I smiled up at him. "You thought you would beat me. Neener."

"Oh, you getting smart with me? You a smart ass? Well let's just shut that smart mouth!" Still gripping my jaw, he drove his tongue in my mouth with a little cry in his throat, almost as if it hurt him. I pushed up to meet his hips a few times.

"Don't…don't…" He sighed, releasing my jaw to prop his arm up again by the elbow.

"Why not?" I punctuated the 'not' with a silky smooth motion.

His forehead banged against mine. "I don't know…I'm out of my head."

"Nah," said, moving again. "Your brain has just moved a little farther down."

He made some sound like trying to suppress a cough, sending a tiny spray of saliva to my lips. I licked it off.

"What'cha waiting for? Christmas is a month away."

"You promise me," he said, and I could see the crazy in his eyes again, like so many times before, "That we'll do this again for Christmas? _Just like this?_ You don't have to get me bull-shit shit, nothing. Just this again."

"You supply the weed and I'll supply the goods."

"Oh, thank you. I'll buy it tomorrow and we'll just keep it, because Jesus Christ…"

I put my hand behind his head and pulled it down, damp, dark blond curls spreading against my cheek.

"Come on, baby. You look like an angel; I love you so much." I sucked his earlobe into my mouth and made him grunt. Animalistic. So fucking hot.

He was _right there. Right there_. I could feel him twitch within me. I thrust up against him once more, twice, three times…four…

His idyllic eyes burst open and the crazy was right there at the surface, begging to come out. Pleading me to set it free.

Five times…six.

And I swear on everything I believe in, he screamed. I thought of the people upstairs, maybe even listening at doors. It was that hot. I would have. It started off as a low keening but rose in timber and volume until my ears rang and buzzed.

Like it was ripped from him.

The crazy escaped. And it was screaming. And I loved it. Racing through his veins, borne on the hot, pumping blood from his sweet heart and giving me as much pleasure to watch as it was for him to experience. This was not dangerous. This was not psychotic. This was love.

It took him a long time to recover, or at least it seemed so to my muddled mind. He was sweaty and burning up, even though the room was growing cold save for our sides by the fireplace. I slipped my legs from around him after he rode the last of it out and he jerked with the hypersensitivity he always did afterwards. My fingers twirled soft curls around and released them as he lay there still within me, playing baby games with his hair. Against my ear he found his voice again, hoarse from the scream.

"I love you."

'I know you do. Likewise."

He lifted his groggy head and there was my Old Tate.

"That was fucking hot, hotter than hottest thing ever in the history of mankind. A hot bag made out of hot filled with little bits and pieces of hot," he said with wonder. "Did I yell?"

"You sure did. Screamed, more like."

"Damn. Did the crystal break?"

"Not that I heard." Smiling at him.

Thinly, from the headphones:

_Now I've got that feeling once again,_

_I can't explain; you would not understand._

"Let's use the same song again next time, too. Put it on repeat, it just like it is now. Got a good beat. I can dance to it. I give it a ten."

He laughed against my neck.


End file.
